Räikkönen ends the last day on the lead

CIRCUIT DE BARCELONA-CATALUNYA | After the first half of the testing session, the situation on track was very calmed around 13:30. Since there was no official pause for lunch, the morning session was continued instead of being ended. However, all teams interrupted their activity, apart from a few installation laps, so they unofficially stopped the session.

A few moments later, the activity started to increase, Valtteri Bottas replaced Lewis Hamilton in Mercedes; while Renault confirmed that, due to the problems they had during the morning, Carlos Sainz would do the entire day.

At 14:20, Fernando Alonso was able to return to track after the problems the team had in the morning, which forced and engine replacement. By that time of the day, the teams, as it happened yesterday, were doing long runs and race simulations. Alonso did, however, a qualifying simulation with hypersoft tyres and set a great time which would be later cancelled due to track limits.

One hour later, Sergey Sirotkin finally left the Williams and gave it to Lance Stroll and, twenty minutes later, Sainz went on track again after having lost seven hours with a gearbox issue. Once again, the drivers were focused on long runs, but some drivers started to improve their times during the last hour. Alonso and Sainz improved their lap times and put themselves inmediately behind the Ferrari.

The tests finally ended with Räikkönen leading the last day, but Vettel‘s time from yesterday remained the fastest from both weeks of testing. Alonso and Sainz have ended second and third, respectively after completing competitive laps at the end of a day on which both have struggled. Mercedes has been the team with most laps today, with 201 between its both drivers; while Renault has been the team with less laps, with only 45.

Final results: